


Sunset

by The3rdTrumpeteer



Series: Refuge and Remedies [11]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, kind of a character study I guess, some h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 08:56:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15360846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The3rdTrumpeteer/pseuds/The3rdTrumpeteer
Summary: Jack and what he draws through the years.





	Sunset

Jack is ten years old. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in this room (more of a closet than a room, more of a cell than a closet), but what he does know if that he can’t take much more of the silence. At least the last room--the one with the bunk beds full of kids and the older boys who pushed him down--had  _life_  in it. This one, with its stone walls and tiny window in the corner that is too dirty to let in more than a sliver of light, reeks of despair and hopelessness and death.

There is mud on the floor from the rain that seeps through the cracks in the window and the blood that drips from Jack’s forehead. Jack stares at the stone wall. The light from the window hits it and if Jack squints, he can almost imagine that he is outside again. Free from this awful place. At home with his mother and father...even though there’s still a piece of his mind that shouts at him that he’s never going to see them again, they’re  _gone_ -

Jack shivers. It’s cold in this little room. He dips his fingers into the mud that stains his shoes and soaks through his pants and dabs it onto the wall before he can stop himself. He has never tried drawing before--his father didn’t approve--but Jack finds the motions calming. He doesn’t know what he’s drawing (or painting, rather, he decides), but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s doing something. His hands are moving, his mind is working, he’s not thinking about that fact that he hasn’t eaten in days and that his forehead is still bleeding and that he’s too young to die in a tiny stone room-

When he’s finished, Jack finds that he has created a sort of sunset. He can almost make out trees and buildings from the marks he painted on the wall. Even though the color is dull, Jack can almost see the colors of the sunset, the golds and reds and oranges, and it makes him feel a little less alone.

Jack is thirteen years old. He has a real job now, one as a newsie, and he’s decided that it’s the best thing in the world. He has money (sometimes), a roof over his head, and friends that really care about him. Jack has a little brother now, too. He grew up an only child, but now he has Crutchie, and he wouldn’t trade their relationship for anything in the world.

Crutchie is eleven, and he and Jack are thick as thieves. They sell together, and they play together in the park until the sun begins to set. Sometimes, they linger a little longer in the grass and stare up at the sky as it explodes into a unique sort of rainbow, one that can only be seen as the sun disappears and makes way for the moon.

Sometimes Jack and Crutchie sneak up to the rooftop at night. It’s there that they grow closer as brothers. It’s there that Crutchie tells Jack how he survived polio but lost his family, and it’s there that Jack confides in Crutchie about the nightmares of the Refuge that plague him every time he closes his eyes. It’s there that they smile and laugh and cry together. It’s there that Jack mentions that he would like to draw the stars, and it’s there that Crutchie pulls a bit of charcoal and a scrap of paper from his pockets and proudly presents them to Jack.

After that, there is nothing to stop Jack from drawing. He and Crutchie scour the city for any supplies they can find, from scraps of newspaper to broken pencils. Once, Jack manages to pick a pencil straight from a reporter’s pocket. It’s better than anything he’s ever used, and he draws with it until it is little more than a pile of wooden shavings. Jack draws everything, but he draws the sunset most of all. He only wishes he could make his drawings as colorful as the beautiful miracle he sees at the end of each day.

Jack is fifteen years old. He has been in and out of the Refuge three times now, each stay shorter and more violent than the last. Every time he escapes, he heads straight for the lodging house and the roof and the stars. And every time, Crutchie is there, sitting on one of the mattresses they dragged up so long ago, as if he knew Jack was coming.

Crutchie is afraid for Jack, and Jack knows this. He has returned with bruises and cuts, stories and panic attacks and nightmares and traumas and-

Jack continues to draw. Kloppman is nice enough to save the last few pages from the books the newsies use to sign in for the night, and he gives these pages to Jack. They’re larger than what Jack is used to, and he’s happy. He can draw more. Sometimes he draws the sunset and the stars. Sometimes he draws Crutchie and Specs and Race and Smalls (she has only been with the newsies for a few months, but she’s a little girl with a big heart).

But mostly Jack draws the Refuge. The bunks and the kids and the rats and the blood and-

He only shows Crutchie these drawings, because Crutchie is the only one who knows how to keep the nightmares away.

Jack is seventeen years old. He has been in and out of the Refuge five times, and he has made new, unexpected friends, and he has led a strike, and he has seen his little brother arrested, tortured, and released. Jack has seen too much, heard and done too much. And that is why he draws.

He still draws Crutchie, his light grin that still seems so innocent, his eyes--though happy--that are much too old for someone his age. Jack draws Davey and Les now, too, the way they are so alike and so different at the same time, the way they care for one another in a manner that reminds Jack so much of Crutchie and himself. Jack doesn’t draw the Refuge anymore; he doesn’t need to cope that way anymore, he finds, not when he has such a wonderful family to take care of him.

It’s the Christmas after the strike that he receives it--a small package wrapped in an old newspaper, given to him by all the other newsies with bits of their hard-earned money that they managed to save up over the past few months. It’s a sketchbook, a real one, with blank pages and a paper cover and a strip of leather to hold it closed. There’s a set of pencils, too, sharp and ready to be used.

The first thing Jack draws is a sunset.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: @poorguysheadisdoingwhatnow


End file.
